Moderates Hold Key in Pakistan

Wednesday

Mar 26, 2008 at 5:39 AM

Voters turned away from religious parties in the February elections, backing moderates from a small regional party that may now wield big influence in the country.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — One of the most significant results of Pakistan’s elections in February was the defeat of the religious parties that ran this critical border province for the last five years. In their place, voters elected moderates from a small regional party that may now wield big influence over Pakistan’s changing strategy toward its militants.

The victory of the Awami National Party, or A.N.P., was welcomed by Western officials and Pakistanis as a clear rejection of the Taliban and the religious parties that backed them here in North-West Frontier Province. The party will now be part of the governing coalition in the national Parliament, and sees itself as critically placed to begin a dialogue with the militants, something the Bush administration has regarded warily.

Not only has this province suffered most from the militants, who are based in the adjacent tribal areas, but most of the militants are from the same Pashtun ethnic group as the A.N.P. Pashtuns populate this region, on both sides of the Afghan border. The A.N.P., a Pashtun nationalist party, and Pakistan’s militants speak the same language.

Talks between them have already begun quietly, as some militant groups and their supporters send messages and emissaries to the newly elected parties, said Afrasiab Khattak, A.N.P.’s secretary general here. “They saw a government coming with a new paradigm, with a plan that is not just bombarding,” he said.

Though the party also has a history of nonviolence in the tradition of Gandhi, Mr. Khattak was quick to dispel suggestions by members of the Bush administration that it would appease the militants in exchange for peace.

Mr. Khattak said talks with Al Qaeda and other foreign militants, many of whom come from Arab lands and Central Asia, were out of the question. “We don’t have a common language with them,” he said.

The A.N.P. says its priority is ending the violence. Like its partners in the national government — the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N — it backs relying less on the military to cut civilian casualties, which have soured Pakistanis on the war. To do so, it proposes development in the tribal areas and a sustained dialogue that, it hopes, will answer many grievances with the government that have pushed ethnic groups toward the militants.

It wants constitutional changes to give the provinces greater autonomy and more consultation in choosing the provincial governor, who is appointed by the government in Islamabad, the capital, and has direct influence over the tribal areas. An additional long-term aim is to allow political parties to work in the tribal areas and bring the region into the mainstream of Pakistani politics.

The A.N.P.’s leaders say their strength comes from the Pashtun tribal tradition of the hujra: traditionally, the landowner’s reception room, where guests are received, disputes solved and decisions made by the elders.

Elevating that tradition would reverse what has been the state policy for decades. Since Pakistan’s independence 60 years ago, the government has suppressed nationalist tendencies among ethnic minorities, fearing disintegration, and encouraged Islam as a unifying force.

Many here see the return of the A.N.P. as the reassertion of tribal culture over the Islamist militancy propagated by the mullahs and religious party leaders who formed the last government. The A.N.P. leaders say they will work through the tribal code of the Pashtuns. “We would like to confront the militants on our own ground,” Mr. Khattak said.

But those talks would not include everyone. Negotiations, he said, were probably unsustainable with hardened Pakistani militants like Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused of masterminding most of the recent suicide bombings in Pakistan, including the one in which the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed.

The A.N.P. has been among the strongest critics of how President Pervez Musharraf’s government dealt with the militants, in particular of the peace deals with them in recent years in North and South Waziristan, which the party lambasted as appeasement that had allowed the militants to regroup and grow stronger. It has long accused Pakistan’s intelligence services of supporting Islamist militant groups so that they could conduct insurgencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Although the Pakistani military and intelligence services are now under attack by militants, the A.N.P. maintains that the military-intelligence establishment has for years ignored the need to contain the militants’ activities or close off their sanctuaries in the tribal areas, and has even allowed the militants to remain active for future strategic use.

The A.N.P. says the last government’s laissez-faire policy toward the militants was effectively one of connivance. Another senior party member, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss confidential talks, said that he had told American officials that the best thing they could do to fight terrorism was to warn Pakistani intelligence to stop backing militants.

“You need to say one more time, ‘You are either with us or against us,’ ” the senior member said, referring to his warning.

Mr. Khattak was skeptical of the government’s cease-fire in February with Mr. Mehsud, which he called another example of government double dealing that allows militants to survive.

A senior official of the A.N.P., who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said the party learned of a militant training camp in the Mohmand tribal district last year that was the source of attacks in the adjacent Charsadda area on party members and twice on Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, the former interior minister. Despite their warnings, the government did nothing for five months, and acted only after the death of Ms. Bhutto, he said.

The party has also accused the Musharraf government of duplicity with Afghanistan by professing cooperation, while doing nothing to prevent Afghan Taliban operating from Pakistan.

An A.N.P.-led government in the frontier would improve ties with Afghanistan, and with President Hamid Karzai, who is close to the A.N.P. leaders, said a Western diplomat who refused to be identified following protocol. The party leader, Asfandyar Wali Khan, has already called for a cohesive border policy among Pakistan and Afghanistan and coalition forces, the diplomat said.

Yet despite their distrust of the military-intelligence establishment, the A.N.P. and the Pakistan Peoples Party still see a role for the army in the fight against terrorism, but they want it contained to controlled operations to prevent civilian casualties.

“The military should only be used for surgical operations acting on good intelligence,” Mr. Khattak said.

Officials from each party have advocated withdrawing the army from daily operations in the tribal areas and increasing the use of police and tribal militias for counterinsurgency operations, a plan the United States already assists.

The military must work with the new political forces in the government and with the United States, NATO and other international players, Mr. Khattak said.

“Only if there is a triangle with us, the army and the international community will it work,” he said. “If it works, then there is some hope.”

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